Month: February 2015

With the continued and growing emphasis on sustainability in construction we could be on the verge of a radical shift in how we think about the current stock of buildings. The time may be coming when we stop planning for building replacement, and instead plan for building reuse. That in turn would significantly change the roles of designers and builders.

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The housing industry has proceeded at a red-hot pace for several years running. An all-time record was set in 1998, when 886,000 new-site single family homes were sold. That represented a 10% gain from the robust total of 804,000 homes sold in 1997, and an 8.1% rise from the prior record of 819,000 units in 1977. Single-family housing construction accounted for $48 million of the total $125 million generated in the industry.

Comparing home construction to job gains from 2013 through 2015, NAR found that among the 171 metro areas it studied, Chicagoland’s housing need is the fifth-worst in the nation, with 94,457 permits required to maintain the historical equilibrium of 1.6 jobs to every single-family permit.

Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, says this is a problem that has persisted since the downturn.

“Inadequate single-family home construction since the Great Recession has had a detrimental impact on the housing market by accelerating price growth and making it very difficult for prospective buyers to find an affordable home – especially young adults,” Yun said. “Without the expected pick-up in building as job gains rose in recent years, new and existing inventory has shrunk, prices have shot up and affordability has eroded, despite mortgage rates at or near historic lows.”